With it being Halloween week, you'll no doubt notice a spate of spooky stories cluttering up the papers. And you'll struggle to find a finer offering than this crispy tale from the Manchester Evening News

"Mum-of-one Katie Corcoran got an early Halloween shock when she came face to face with a ghoulish crisp resembling Edvard Munch's painting The Scream," the paper howls.

Katie, 40, from Swinton, said: "With it being near Halloween, I wondered if it was some sort of promotion but when I looked at the other crisps, they were just normal.

"I was a bit spooked at first but it is quite funny. I will keep it and show it to my friends. It's almost like it really has eyes – the detail in it looks like eyeballs."

Last time I had the pleasure of donning the Northerner's august tweeds (mint balls rolling round in pocket, of course), I reported the Wigan Evening Post's exclusive on the Labour party's decision to impose all-female shortlists on the town's two safe-as-houses seats. Both Wigan MP Neil Turner and Makerfield MP Ian McCartney have already said they will not contest next year's general election.

However, the news was as about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit to some Labour party members, who have vowed to fight the directive from the party's National Executive Committee.

Opposition is being led by the party activist Ann Rampling, who has launched a petition against the ban on men, arguing members should be free to select the best candidates.

"What we want is a really good choice across the board, not just women," she told the Manchester Evening News. "We want men as well so we can pick the best for our area."

Labour's NEC agreed earlier this month to drop plans for an all-women shortlist in Burnley following opposition. But party bosses are unlikely to overturn the decision in Wigan. A national party source told the Wigan Evening Post such an about-face would be very unusual.

They said: "The National Executive Committee will always listen to the views of constituency parties but it would be highly, highly unusual for such a decision to be overturned at this stage. In fact I have only known it once in the last 10 years."

Makerfield party members have already voted to reject the female shortlists, three days after the Wigan party took the same decision. A special constituency meeting attacked the party's national hierarchy for imposing the diktat designed to usher more women into the Commons. More than 60 members attended the Makerfield meeting – three times the usual turnout.

Although there is no formal appeal procedure against the "no men" rule, members are still lobbying the NEC in the hope they can persuade it to change its recommendation. But party bosses said the restrictions were necessary to ensure a fair balance in parliament.

A Labour spokesman said: "The NEC organisational sub-committee took the decision that the selection process for both Makerfield and Wigan should be based on all-women shortlists. If people want a parliament that is more open, plural and democratic then we need to make big changes.

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I loved a headline in the Cumbria News and Star earlier this week: "'Scruffy geezer' stuns Keswick record staff with offer to sign AC/DC record" – for the "geezer" in question was none other than the band's lead singer, Brian Johnson.

Keswick Collectibles co-owner David Lomas thought nothing of it when he saw a "scruffy geezer in a flat cap" browsing through the vinyl at the St John's Street shop. The man brought a copy of 1980's Back In Black – one of the best-selling albums of all time, having shifted something in the region of 40m copies – to the counter and asked David if he wanted it signed.

"Er... who are you?" replied David.

"I'm the singer," said Brian, whose gravelly voice is one of the most familiar in rock music.

David was happy to let Brian sign the album and the signature quickly made the record a lucrative item – a customer offered to buy it there and then, for £25 instead of £8.

Mark Stainton, one of the shop's three co-owners, said: "David didn't recognise him. He does the books, not the records.

"He wouldn't recognise Madonna if she came in wearing a pointy bra.

The News and Star goes on to wonder if the singer's new-found love of Cumbria will inspire the band to re-record some of their best-known songs: "Perhaps we can look forward to Back in Blackford, Highway to Helvellyn and Whole Lotta Rosley."

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Up in the north-east, a great example of the kind of ultra-localised "microjournalism" that many pundits believe is the only way for regional papers and websites to stay afloat as their casual readers are lured away by the abundance of "free" news sources. And I put free in quote marks because there is, of course, a price to pay.

Northern Echo reporter Chris Lloyd's blog, Echo Memories, exemplifies the kind of passion and depth that can only come from reporters with real local knowledge and experience. But small-town newsrooms are squeezed to breaking point, and salaries are by and large so low that most talented, ambitious young journalists leap into the nearest lifeboat offered by PR companies or local government press offices. The result of this being that the local hack who's worked his patch for 20 years, knows all the movers and shakers and is always getting tipped off about scandal, is dying out. And having worked with a few of these inspirational reporters, I know this is a huge loss.

But I digress. Lloyd's latest blogpost this week was about the local fable of the Carlbury milepost. He obviously knows his stuff, and managed to track down the near-legendary roadside marker on the A67 between Stockton and Darlington. Turnpike anthropology may not be everybody's cup of tea, as Lloyd acknowledges: "Because I am a strange individual, I reckon all mileys should be treasured," he says. But the Carlbury post seems something of a special case, and the local history he manages to squeeze into the blog is worth a read – even for non-locals like myself.

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One of the most controversial issues on Humberside – the cost of travelling over the region's most famous landmark, the Humber Bridge – has been kicked back into the political foreground.

The chairman of the board that governs the bridge, councillor David Gemmell, told the transport minister, Sadiq Khan, the board was "fully supportive" of a campaign to abolish or radically reduce the tolls.

Khan told a regional delegation this week he would look at all the options on the tolls after accepting 10,000 signatures on the Grimsby Telegraph's "A Toll Too Far" petition on Monday. He met the board after going against his advisers, throwing out a 20p increase to the tolls in July. He also earmarked a £6m maintenance grant to cover the financial shortfall caused by freezing the tolls.

Gemmell told the Telegraph: "We knew there was the delegation going down Monday and we took the opportunity to say the board is fully supportive of what the delegation were doing and we were in favour of what they were requesting."

However, he said bridge managers must fulfil their legal obligations. A debt review scheduled for April 2011 is thought to be the most likely avenue for negotiation.

Both major political parties are now committed to looking at the tolls after the Conservative shadow transport secretary, Theresa Villiers MP, announced any future Tory government would commission a Treasury-led review into the charges.

Have you ever wondered what might have happened to Romeo and Juliet if they hadn't died but instead had managed to find a way to be together? The answer can be found in Ben Power's play, which offers another kind of love story, and is tantalisingly cast with Kathryn Hunter and Forbes Masson as a long-married couple who know that their life together is drawing to a close.